news

Glistening black horsehair strings

In the world of early harps there is quite a bit of interest in “the medieval harp” as can be seen in early medieval miniature paintings in psalter manuscripts.

These images are part of a wide tradition of showing David seated with a stringed instrument. An interesting paper by Helen Roe (“The David Cycle”, JRSAI 79, 1949) points out the long visual heritage of this image as a symbol, from orpheus playing the lyre whilst seated on a leopard – the lyre gradually changes into a harp while the leopard morphs into the chair. This kind of long-standing symbol tradition should instantly caution us that we are not looking at photo-realistic depictions of the everyday world, much less technical blueprints showing the physical structure of real-world objects!

More specifically, the versions showing David’s instrument as a triangular frame harp with a straight neck are fairly specific to the British Isles in the 10th and 11th century, from the “Pictish” stone carvings in the East of Scotland to the late Anglo-Saxon manuscript paintings. After the 12th century the necks of the harps drawn in these images start to bend downwards to give us the normal “romanesque harp” shape of high medieval art, similar in broad outline to the surviving medieval Gaelic harps.

Supposing that the straight-necked triangular frame harp of the Pictish stones and the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts does actually represent a type of real-world musical instrument, back in 2000-2001 I made a little harp with 12 strings, based on the painting of King David with his musicians in the 11th century Winchcombe Psalter.

There are many serious organological problems with this kind of approach, not least that it is necessary to basically design a new musical instrument based on modern design and construction principles, using the old depiction merely as a guide to outline and proportion. The harp in the Winchcombe Psalter seems fairly large compared to David, though the proportions of the scene generally are not too life-like, and yet it has only 12 strings. In 2000 I saw three possible solutions – make it big with 12 strings, make it big with perhaps 21 strings, make it small with 12 strings. In the end I chose the last of those options. I’m not sure that was the best idea but on the other hand I’m not sure there is a satisfactory solution to dealing with this type of work. When you make any decision like that you close off possibilities and drive the interpretation in one specific direction which may be accidentally correct but is more likely to be innocently wrong.

Anyway I fitted thick rope-twisted white horsehair strings on the harp – you can see and hear it in this state on its original web page. The strings never really sounded good, and I really stopped using the harp. For a while it was on loan to a re-enactor in England, (who managed to lose the bag with a beautiful tablet-woven strap on it), and I didn’t have it here when I was experimenting with horsehair string making for Project Telyn Rawn.

I got it back a few years ago and it sat neglected on the shelf. So today I pulled it down and used what I learned from making black horsehair strings for the jouhikko and the Trossingen lyre, to fit new black horsehair strings to this little harp.

I’m still not really convinced of this as a viable solution to the musical instruments used in early medieval Britain but at least it is working now, and sounds nicer than it ever has before.

Now to work up some suitable early medieval style improvisation with it!

In the Cave of the Picts

Yesterday I packaged up a menagerie of instruments and rode on the train all the way to Elgin, and then out to the coast and down a pretty extreme scramble down the cliff and along over the rocks to the Sculptor’s Cave, on the shore of the Moray Firth. I had been asked to play music in the caves for recording by the European Music Archaeology Project.

One of the caves contains Pictish designs carved on the walls, so I prepared some early medieval repertory and as well as the Queen Mary harp, I took with me the two lyres – the replica Trossingen lyre with horsehair strings, and the early Irish lyre with iron, latten and silver strings and with the Iron Age lyre bridge from Uamh an Ard Achaidh on the Isle of Skye. Also I took the bowed lyre or jouhikko, and the trump or jews harp, and the tambourines, and both my horns – the short early medieval style end-blown horn and the long Bronze-Age style side-blown horn.

The site was beautiful; there was almost no view over to the Black Isle because of the haar, but the sun was shining, the gulls were loud and the archaeological team from Bradford were friendly and working hard on their trenches.

Unfortunately there were serious technical problems with the recording equipment and there were also clashes between access times and train times, forcing me to leave early before high tide cut the caves off, and so in the end I only managed to do a few short takes with the lyres, harp and big horn in one of the caves. Bill Taylor was there as well, and he did some takes in one of the other caves after I had left. All in all, it was fun to play in this venue, and wonderful to spend all day exploring and investigating this powerful and fascinating place.

Harp concerts in St Andrews

Every summer from 2007 to 2013, I have performed a series of summer concerts for Historic Scotland at St Andrews Cathedral ruins. Unfortunately from 2014 the Cathedral are no longer able to host this popular series.

However, I really wanted to continue with this fine tradition and so we have booked All Saints Church hall on North Castle Street in the heart of old St Andrews. This is a nice arts-and-crafts venue, and I have used it before for a concert.

I also wanted to keep the concerts as free admission events as they have been since the very beginning.

This is where you come in. In the absence of reliable institutional funding, would you be able to help keep this series going as one of the highlights of the summer season in St Andrews?

I have set up an indiegogo crowdfunding page at igg.me/at/harp

Any amount that you are able to contribute will be a great help towards the costs of running this series.

I am planning to run four concerts, on the first Wednesday of each month from June through to September, at 12.45pm.

You can see details of the proposed programmes on the website at
http://www.simonchadwick.net/summer/

Please pass this on to any friends you know who would be interested in helping support the harp concert series. And I hope to see you at the concerts!

More interlace

Following on from the interlace on the caskets I posted yesterday, here is a whalebone gaming piece found in a cave on the isle of Rum. The Museum suggests it is 15th or early 16th century.

Again the style of the interlace carving is reminiscent of the pillar carving on the Trinity and Queen Mary harps – the interlace in low relief over and under against a recessed ground, tightly knotted, with parallel incised stripes emphasising the turn of the ribbons. Compare especially this panel on the Trinity harp forepillar:

The gaming pieces is a bit wobbly in its execution, but then so too is the interlace on the Trinity harp. However the thing about the gaming piece  that really got me is the weird asymmetry. I have rotated my photo to show it with the axis of symmetry vertical, however it does not have a horizontal symmetry. The pattern of the top half is quite elegant and interesting, but if mirrored in the bottom half it would not give a single endless line. Perhaps the artist saw this and made one fewer edge loops, so crossing over two of the ribbons. However this also has the effect of creating two closed circles in the lower half. We see similar closed circles on the Trinity pillar. Look at how the end circles on the trinity pillar do not close but loop back on each other. This is similar to how the two circles in the upper half of the gaming piece are not closed.
I have to say that no matter how I turn and manipulate the gaming piece in my mind, it is not as elegant a composition as the panel on the Trinity harp pillar!

whalebone caskets

In the National Museum today I looked at the two whalebone caskets. They are about 15th century in date, from the West Highlands – similar caskets appear on the stone slabs such as the one from Keills, and it has been suggested that the caskets were used to store documents such as charters and land-grants.

I was interested to look at the interlace panels; they seem similar to the interlace on the Trinity College harp forepillar. There is also some similarity with the small sections of interlace on the Queen Mary harp forepillar.

 above: the Eglinton casket; below: the Fife casket

“Like medieval clockwork” – copying the missing Queen Mary harp iron tuning pins.

When I was commissioning my replica of the Queen Mary harp in 2006, I paid attention to the 30th tuning pin, which is obviously a later addition, shorter, made of iron, split end, different drive, and off the main row. This pin is now missing but I made a copy of it based on descriptions and old photos. I made the 29 brass pins with their scores on their shafts copying the museum photo of the 21 pins now in the harp, and for the 8 missing pins I made the same design of brass pins without scores.

If I had been more on the ball back then I would have noticed that those same old photos and descriptions I used for the 30th pins, also show the missing 8 from the main row, and those missing 8 are plain iron not decorated brass, and 5 of them have split ends.

So today’s project was to make 8 handmade iron pins, and install them in the harp. The contrast of the iron and brass pins is subtle but interesting in appearance, reminding me of my initial reaction to the handmade decorated pins: “like medieval clockwork”.

I broke the lowest gold B string taking it off but there was enough spare to rewind the toggle and reuse it. The string had thinned where it went over the pin – presumably a gradual process over seven years since I fitted it in 2007.

Pins

The past week or two have continued the making things theme. I have done a series of tuning keys as test-runs; I have made a page advertising them which I will send out for my 1st May Emporium Update.

I also have made the set of pins for my HHSI Student Downhill harp, and today while it was here with my student who has it, I fitted the pins – pulling each of the old steel pins out in turn and then replacing it with a new brass pin. I had to shim all of the brass pins because for some reason they are marginally smaller than the steel pins, and I used thin brass sheet to make the shims. Plenty of the antique Gaelic harps have brass shims in their pin holes and I find it works well.

We instantly noticed how much better the harp worked to tune, with the new pins – the key fits much more snugly on the new pins with their tapering drives, giving a much more positive touch to the tuning. And the new pins look rather good with their decorated drives. I am very pleased with the result.

I have always thought that handmade pins with tapering drives work so much better than machine made steel pins with parallel drives, but inertia has meant I have not bothered doing anything about it until now. Hardly anyone has handmade pins on their harps, even top players with quality decorated instruments. I can only think of 3 or 4 off the top of my head.

I am going to make a few more pins and then I think I will make a page advertising them for sale for the 1st June update! I think that this would make a fantastic upgrade to anyone’s harp, to replace the pins!

Tuning key

I lost my tuning key in Edinburgh last weekend. At first I was rather irritated; the replica Queen Mary clarsach has handmade tuning key drives, copying the original, which are rectangular rather than the usual square. So the key is also custom-made with a rectangular socket, and also has a second socket in the end of the handle to fit the square drive of the 30th pin. Basically it is useless to anyone else! I did have a rather ill-fitting spare with me

However after a while I realised this was a great opportunity. I made this key not too long after the harp was new, and while it was comfortable to use with its  roundwood quince handle from the garden here, the rectangular socket was always a bit oversized and was loose on all the pins. Also it was rather “rustic” in appearance.

So today I made a new key for the Queen Mary harp. This one builds on my experience making the first. The design is the same – a T shaped pin, with a brass socket made from a rod soldered inside a tube, the end of the rod slit with saw and files to fit the drives. The second socket, from a large clock key, fits in the end of the handle. Both sockets are fixed in with little brass pins running through the wood, and secured with glue to stop them shifting.

For the handle of this key I used a piece of ancient Irish bog oak which Davy Patton gave me years ago. I had thought of carving medieval West Highland designs into it, and even gilding the designs, but as the handle took shape it became very spare and elegant. The bog oak does not carve very cleanly anyway. So in the end the only decoration was a pair of parallel incised bands at each end of the handle and each end of the main socket shaft, echoing the pairs of incised bands on the Queen Mary harp tuning pins.

I have to make another soon as my student who has the Student Downhill harp has lost the key for it. It ought to have a brass socketed key anyway as the commercial steel-socketed key it used to have was starting to chew up the decorated brass pins I have started fitting to it. Which reminds me, I need to finish the set of brass pins for that harp. So many jobs lining up…

Dupplin Cross

On the way back from Edinburgh this afternoon we enjoyed a large detour which included a stop at the old church in Dunning. Inside this preserved medieval building in the care of Historic Scotland, is the early medieval Dupplin Cross.

The cross is very well presented in the base of the tower, and is extremely well lit with raking light from above, allowing a good appreciation of the relief carving. Of course I really wanted to see the harpist, King David I suppose, but all of the carved panels were really lovely. The inscription was on the back side and was the least well illuminated so there was no possibility of reading any of it.

Once everything is tidy and I am feeling less tired I will have a better look at my photographs and maybe will have somthing more to say about the David panel on the cross!

Until 1999, the cross stood on the nearby hillside, and although obviously the 1200-year-old carving and inscription is much better preserved now the cross is inside, it seems a shame that it no longer stands in situ, looking down over the ancient Pictish royal site at Forteviot.  I don’t believe the original site is signposted or marked in any way – wouldn’t it be wonderful if a cast or replica could be installed there?